I don’t know who first referred to having a “burr under my saddle”, and the fact I studiously avoided looking it up while some won’t be able not to is proof of my pudding. (I forbore to look that up too, and the fact that I had to “forebear” as opposed to “chose not to” is further proof). Of what? Continue reading
Burr Under My Saddle
Posted in Big Tech Big Lie or Promise?, For Anyone who dares
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Going Digitally Deaf
As “Tiresias instructs Odysseus that, before he can go home, he must take his oar and walk inland until someone mistakes it for a winnowing fan—a tool for winnowing grain—and asks him what it is. In other words, as soon as he’s gone to a place where people don’t know what an oar is, then he’s gone far enough” (https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/05). This is interpreted as Odysseus needing to make one last sacrifice to the gods to make amends. I would do this with a smartphone, not to make a sacrifice to the true God but to show there is no place that a person will not know what a smart phone is.
On vicarage, I preached at Jesus Lutheran Church of the Deaf in Austin, Texas. Till then, I didn’t realize how isolated deaf people are much more so than blind people. With age, I’ve discovered how isolated just being hard of hearing can make you. They warn you about this.
“They” being old people doctors and agencies. As we start to lose our hearing, we have people repeat things. Then, since you can only say “what” so many times, you start pretending like you heard what they said. This will progress so that you’re missing so much of what’s really being said that people will stop talking to you. Your bubble of people grows smaller and smaller. “They” say this creeping isolating and cutting off can lead to dementia.
I don’t know about that. I do know that I am hard of hearing digitally speaking. I’m only finding out piecemeal just how isolated I’ve become. Books I’m listening to while I walk are usually nonfiction. Lost in the Valley of Death is about the gone-missing internet phenome, Justin Alexander. Never heard of him. I heard on sports radio the sportscaster use this phrase: “He was like a weasel on a woodpecker. That’s real thing. Look it up.” Continue reading
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Only a Wizard Could Do This
Posted in General
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Fear This?
Posted in Families, Psychology - Knowledge Falsely So Called?
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The Word, The Word, The Word
In General Douglas MacArthur’s retirement speech before the West Point corps of cadets on May 12, 1962 he famously ended with these words: “Today marks my final roll call with you. But I want you to know that when I cross the river, my last conscious thoughts will be of the Corps, and the Corps, and the Corps” (https://bit.ly/Macarthur-speech).[i] I think Luther’s last words could’ve been, but they weren’t, “The Word, the Word, the Word.” What here follows will be familiar to you if not downright repetitious to you if you were in my Bible class or Confirmation, but I write it down lest I forget. Continue reading
Posted in Families, Missouri Megatrends
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What Every Confessional Lutheran Pastor Should Know
Master of Divinity trained pastors are going to become as rare as hen’s teeth. With upwards of 9 ‘alternate’ and much easier, quicker, and funner ways to ordination, the educated way is going to go by the wayside. So how do you find them? Moreover, even some of the MDiv educated are wonky if not woke. Continue reading
Posted in Ablaze, Contemporary Worship, Missouri Megatrends
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You just Thought the Plastic Raft in the Pacific was Bad
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Knowledge Falsely So Called
1 Timothy 6:20, in the KJV, reads, “O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called:” The Greek word translated ‘science’ is gnōsis. The basis for our word ‘knowledge’. Frankly, I am surprised that 7 of the 62 English translations retain ‘science’. Puts a whole other spin on appeals to ‘science’ today, doesn’t it? Continue reading
Posted in Big Tech Big Lie or Promise?, Missouri Megatrends
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Synods Make for Strange Bedfellows
Having been blessedly free of the Lutheran Church Misery Synod overall and its Texas District for 6 years now, I have no standing with either. Truth be told, even for the 36 years I belonged to the former and the 28 years I belonged to the latter, I did not. But something drew me in my superannuation (Okay, I had to look this synonym up.) or perhaps in my dotage to the Texas District 2025 convention. It might have been that the first district convention I ever attended was the 1985 Texas one where my pregnant wife, myself, a pastor friend, and his pregnant wife shared a room at the Hotel Galvez (This was Airbnb-ing on a whole ‘nother level.). It might have been because those two were killed this year in a motorcycle accident. Continue reading
Posted in Contemporary Worship, Missouri Megatrends
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Reconnect the 6th and 7th Petitions
The Pope made quite a stir when in 2019 he deemed, dared to, correct the Lord who said, “When you pray say…Lead us not into temptation” into “Do not let us fall into temptation”. I have preached a lot on the Lord’s Prayer every 4 years from 1990 to 2023. That in itself doesn’t make me an expert. It does make be experienced in dealing with this petition. Luther’s strong quoting of James 1:13 right off the bat notwithstanding, “God tempts no one”, I have stumbled at times in thinking, teaching and preaching. Ergo, I’ve concluded, that we need to connect the 6th, “Lead us not into temptation” with the 7th, “Deliver us from evil.” Continue reading
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